# Core Academy

Core Academy prepares [Hoon](/hoon/why-hoon.md) developers to become [Arvo](/urbit-os/what-is-urbit-os.md) kernel developers. While only [Hoon School](/build-on-urbit/hoon-school.md) is strictly necessary to follow this material, readers should be capable of writing fairly complex applications in Hoon. Some knowledge of C and/or Rust is also necessary for some of the runtime material.

This written course is adapted from the teaching notes for the 2023 cohort of Core Academy, its first and to-date only live cohort. The course explores each part of Arvo, Zuse, Hoon, and the runtime to contextualize how Urbit works today and where further development is needed.

*The lesson notes represent a snapshot of Urbit core development at Zuse 412k and Vere 2.12. Some details have changed since that release.*

Video recordings of the 2023 Core Academy are [available to watch here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYGEMSwLguIGgrEGwxu2AAbESpfF_LRKx). The order in which vanes are covered differs between this written material and the recorded lectures, but aside from some Q\&A in the lectures it's all the same information.

## Preliminary material <a href="#preliminary-material" id="preliminary-material"></a>

* [Hoon School, Text Parsing III](/build-on-urbit/hoon-school/q2-parsing.md)
* [Hoon School, Generic and Variant Cores](/build-on-urbit/hoon-school/r-metals.md)
* [The Engine Pattern](/hoon/engine-pattern.md)


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